Gender Inequality: Is
the progress to gender
equality stalled?
Shavonne Abella
May 5, 2015
In short: Yes

Progress has been made towards gender equality

BUT

That progress has slowed due to the belief that equality has been reached

Wage Gap

“Time Bind”

Gender roles and expectations

“Enlightened sexism”
Gender: What is it?

Merriam-Webster: “the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically
associated with one sex”

WHO: “socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a
given society considers appropriate for men and women.”

GenderSpectrum: “Biological Gender (sex) includes physical attributes such as
external genitalia, sex chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, and internal
reproductive structures. At birth, it is used to assign sex, that is, to identify
individuals as male or female. Gender on the other hand is far more
complicated. It is the complex interrelationship between an individual’s sex
(gender biology), one’s internal sense of self as male, female, both or neither
(Gender identity) as well as one’s outward presentations and behaviors (gender
expression) related to that perception, including their gender role. Together,
the intersection of these three dimensions produces one’s authentic sense of
gender, both in how people experience their own gender as well as how others
perceive it.”
Some Stats

“The Opt-Out Revolution” Lisa Belkin, 2003

50% undergrad class of Yale, 63% graduate class Berkley Law, 46% Harvard,
51% Columbia. 47% Med students, 50% undergrad business majors

BUT

Only 16% partners in law firms, 16% corporate officers women, and only
8% Fortune 500 CEOs are female. 62/435 House of Reps, 14/100 Senators

2/3rds of mothers aged 25-44 work part time; only 5% work 50+ weekly
hours

Men with MBAs: 95% full-time, Women with MBAs: 67% full-time

Catalyst survey: 26% of women up for senior promotion turn it down; want
to stay home with kids

“As news reports could be transmitted father and farther from the
‘mothership,’ she found herself an hour or two away from home when the
nightly news was done. ‘Will was growing up, and I was driving home from a
fire [….] there would always be wrecks and fires, but there wouldn’t always be
Will’s childhood.’”

“Getting to Equal: Progress, Pitfalls, and Policy Solutions on the Road to
Gender Parity in the Workplace” Pamela Stone, 2009

Women’s participation in labor force lower than men’s: 60% vs 75%, but rising
over a period where men’s participation started to decline

“The bad news is that despite women’s best and sustained efforts, progress
toward gender equality is uneven and appears to be stalling.”


Index of dissimilarity: 1970- 0.57, 2009- 0.47

Most of these gains come from desegregation of work-force, little to no changes in
recent decades

Wage gap narrowing, from 59¢/$1 (1970’s) to 78¢/$1, but wage-gap movement
slowing down
“The combination of rising hours, travel, and 24/7 accountability demanded in
today’s workplaces, coupled with insufficient and inadequate part-time and
flexible options, put these working moms in a classic time-bind.”
Some Graphs

“Do Young Women Expect Gender Equality in Their Future Lives? An Answer From a
Possible Selves Experiment” Janell C. Fetterolf & Alice H. Eagly, 2011

“Although women in the United States have increased their presence and status in the
workforce, as well as their presence in higher education, women still experience lower
wages and greater household duties than men.”

“despite very large increases in women’s labor force participation, they are more likely
than men to work part-time (27% vs. 11% for men) and have a lower overall participation
rate (59% vs. 72% for men; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010)”

Social pressure on women to be “good mothers” by staying home

“Hewlett found that 93% of the women who were not employed at the time they were
interviewed expressed a desire to return to the work force.”

70% housework done by women; married women spend 5x more hours on housework and
2.5 on cooking than married men

“As married mothers of a preschool child, 48.20% expected part-time employment,
34.80% expected full-time employment, and 17.00% expected no employment. Overall,
83.90% planned on attaining an advanced degree.”

“Fantasies of Power” Susan Douglas, 2010


Women in media portrayed as powerful, great jobs, independent

Gender equality has been reached! Women can be lawyers, doctor, presidents!

Over-representation: most women are not high-ranking CEO hero president
doctors
Alternatively, overtly sexist images in media

Bimbos, house-wives, Girls Gone Wild; image-obsessed, shopping, decorative
and shallow

Enlightened Sexism: “Enlightened sexism is a response, deliberate or not, to
the perceive threat of a new gender regime. It insists that women have made
plenty of progress because of feminism-- indeed, full equality has allegedly
been achieved-- so now it’s okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes
of girls and women.”
References
Belkin, Lisa. "The Opt-Out Revolution." The Inequality Reader. Ed. David B.
Grusky and Szonja Szelényi 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2011. 332-36.
Print.
Douglas, Susan J. "Introduction: Fantasies of Power." Enlightened Sexism: The
Seductive Message That Feminism's Work Is Done. New York, NY: Henry Holt
and, LLC, 2010. 1-22. Print.
Fetterolf, Janell C., and Alice H. Eagly. "Do Young Women Expect Gender Equality
in Their Future Lives? An Answer From a Possible Selves Experiment." Sex
Roles 65.1-2 (2011): 83-93. Web.
Stone, Pamela. "Getting to Equal: Progress, Pitfalls, and Policy Solutions on the
Road to Gender Parity in the Workplace." The Inequality Reader. Ed. David B.
Grusky and Szonja Szelényi. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2011. 337-44.
Print.
Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 04 May 2015.
"Understanding Gender." Gender Spectrum. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 May 2015.
"What Do We Mean by "sex" and "gender"?" WHO. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 May 2015.